Ghost hunters: Positively Paranormal is who you’re gonna call

They look ordinary, even a tad campy in matching “Positively Paranormal” T-shirts, but when they begin telling of their experiences the hair stands up on your arm and the chills creep down your spine.

Is that the result of good story telling or the brush of something supernatural?

Kathy Kleibor would say the latter.

“Randolph County and surrounding areas are a hot spot for paranormal activities. There are so many places you wouldn’t expect to be haunted,” she says, among them churches, homes, businesses, bars, even ships.

Since 2007 when she and John Hartman founded Positively Paranormal, an Asheboro-based group that explores the kind of phenomena popularized by TV shows like “The Ghost Hunters” and “Paranormal Witness,” they have clocked over 50 cases.

“We help people who have things happen they can’t explain,” says Kleibor. “We either debunk it or there’s really something there.”

Most often people report being slapped, scratched, knocked down steps or have objects thrown at them by something unseen. Others hear footsteps or voices, see lights or glimpse shadowy figures.

“If they want to get rid of it we will do a cleansing,” she says, using holy water or white sage, a ritual with origins dating back to Native American lore, and prayer, “or we will leave it alone.”

Of the cases they have checked, she estimates 2 percent are legitimate manifestations. Most of the time there is a rational, natural reason for the activity – footsteps are nothing more than the settling of an old house, a cool spot is caused by a draft, light orbs on photographs are camera flashes reflecting off dust particles. Contrary to TV shows, ghost hunting is quite often boring. There’s a lot of walking through briers and woods en route to abandoned buildings – and more danger from snakes, and the occasional homeless person, than ghosts. They often wait for hours in the heat or the cold for something to happen.

“Sometimes you go fishing and you get a big haul and some days you get nothing,” explains Lee Steele, a Graham resident who works as a cashier at a local Walmart when he’s not out ghostbusting. “You can spend hours and never get one hit.”

And then other times, something so unexpected happens it’s worth the wait. Like the time Steele checked a digital recorder he had dropped down a covered well on the U.S.S. North Carolina battleship in Wilmington and heard the words, “Help! Help!” and “Tommy” plainly on the device. Later, he found out a soldier named Tommy had fallen down the well and cracked his skull.

Stacey Washington, a stay-at-home mom who calls Whitsett in Alamance County home, had a similar experience on the ship, which had allowed the group to reserve it for a night of paranormal snooping. Washington was paired with one of the new recruits.

“We always have a partner,” she explains. “We always know where other members are so there’s no contamination of sounds.”

She and the other member were walking toward the engine room when they heard sounds like many people working. This was around 2 a.m. and the only ones on board were the 10 group members. The EMF meter, which measures electromagnetic field radiations that can come from wiring, appliances – or ghosts, the investigators say – began to react.

“When it starts to flash and goes up, you have a possible spirit,” Washington explains.

At that moment the light surged from green to red, the highest point on the monitor.

“I was leaning against the ship’s side. I said, ‘If there’s anyone here with us, thank you for your service, thank you for what you did for our country. Give us a sign.’ ”

About that time a thunderous noise, like a wrench being slammed against the metal side, went off right beside her head.

The experience spooked Washington’s partner. She quit the group the next day.

Washington says she has never been afraid, even after being pinched by unseen hands or feeling the chill bumps that herald a ghostly visitor.

“I believe everything happens for a reason. God is always going to protect us. I should have no fear of that because of my Christian-based faith,” Washington says. “I think it is what we are here for.”

Brian Martin, the self-described sceptic of the group, first looks for the natural explanations and often finds them.

“He busts our bubble all the time,” Washington jokes.

“I believe it (paranormal) does exist,” allows Martin, who lives in High Point and works as a customer service representative for a chemical company. “I truly do. I don’t think it’s as prevalent as some people do.”

So has he come across situations that defied a rational explanation?

Martin recalls an Asheboro home they visited about five years ago, in which the owner felt the presence of her grandmother, but wanted to know for sure. The group set up their equipment, which included video and digital recorders investigators say can pick up voices the natural ear doesn’t hear. Going room to room, they posed several questions. One of the rooms contained several dolls and the group asked: “Do you like going in the room and playing with the dolls?”

At the house, they didn’t hear anything audible, but later when they played the tape back, they heard a distinct voice answer:

“What dolls?”

“It gave me cold chills,” Martin says.

It was definitely a male voice, not the grandmother the woman had supposed. Still, she didn’t want them to do anything about it.

His most frightening experience, however, took place at Mt. Zion Methodist Church and Cemetery near Siler City. The group had been told there was considerable activity there so they had scheduled a time to meet and investigate. Arriving before the others, Martin was sitting in his car, waiting, when “down the side of the car something was scratching. I got out of the car and there was nothing there, no branches, no grass, nothing that could be blowing against it.”

He called his friends.

“Where are you?”

“We’re 15 minutes away,” they told him.

Back in the car, he sat for a few moments. It was very dark, the only light coming from the moon. As his eyes became more accustomed to the dark, Martin could make out something moving. Shadows. Many shadows. Then came more scratching down the car and a heavy thud on the trunk.

“I got the flashlight out of the trunk. I was hoping to see deer. There were no deer. I never could explain what was beating on the side of my car,” he says.

He called his friends and threatened to leave if they weren’t there soon. A few minutes later, they drove into the cemetery, but he was ready to leave. He never cares to go back, and certainly not alone.

“A lot of places do not impress me,” he adds, among them famous sites like Lydia’s bridge in Jamestown where the ghost of a young girl is supposed to appear and ask for a ride, and the Devil’s Tramping Ground near Siler City, a circle where no vegetation will grow, reputedly because of infernal influences. Of the latter, “the only thing I got out of that was ticks and mosquitoes – and a sore back from camping.”

When asked about the “hottest” place they’ve investigated, the group was unanimous: The Pinehurst Convalescent Center near Aberdeen, an abandoned piece of property that once held the Chalfonte Hotel before it was reconfigured into the nursing center that closed many decades ago. Now overgrown, it’s a brooding presence in the woods where new recruits and old hands say they have felt true malevolence. (Want a bit of irony? According to the Moore County tax records, the property parcel number is 24666).

Asheboro’s John Hartman was with one recruit when she was physically attacked and scratched. When he went to help her, Hartman says he was scratched, too.

“It felt like someone holding a lighter up to you. You could see physical scratches. I grabbed the holy water and told her, ‘Let’s go,’ ” Hartman says – the group never enters any place without opening and closing prayers, rosaries and holy water.

The investigators say they recorded their most striking evidence of the paranormal there as well, a photographic image of a winged figure, and recordings, as well as numerous hits on the “ghost box,” an altered AM/FM radio which scans through the stations fast to create white noise the investigators believe a ghost can manipulate to communicate.

A sceptic might question whether the radio picks

up random stations and by pure coincidence they

sound like answers.

“The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) doesn’t allow cuss words,” Kleibor counters. “When we use the ‘ghost box’ we hear some of the things they say. There are so many cuss words in it, you know it’s not something that’s going to be picked up off the radio signal. It has to be something the spirits are saying.”

The most prevalent recording at the nursing home was an angry man yelling, “Leave!” repeatedly and saying their names, a common occurrence in many of the cases they’ve investigated, according to the members.

Indeed, ghostbusting has its share of thrills and chills, they agree, but they mainly do it to help others.

“We do get pleasure out of it when we know we help somebody,” Kleibor says. “If not for that, we probably wouldn’t do it.”

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Want to go ghostbusting? Here’s some equipment you may need.

EM (electromagnetic) pump, which emits a electromagnetic field to attract spirits.

EMF meter, which measures electromagnetic field radiations that can come from fans, appliances, wiring – or ghosts; also known as a K2 meter.